CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS – Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani girl who survived an assassination attempt by the Taliban, has been honored as Harvard University’s humanitarian of the year.

Malala, an outspoken proponent for girls’ education, was at Harvard on Friday to accept the 2013 Peter J. Gomes Humanitarian Award. Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust said she was pleased to welcome Malala because of their shared interest in education.

Malala was shot in the head last October. Militants said she was attacked because she was critical of the Taliban, not because of her views on education.

The 16-year-old said she hopes to become a politician because politicians can have influence on a broad scale.

She spoke nostalgically about her home region, the Swat Valley, and said she hopes to return someday. She called it a “paradise” but described a dangerous area where militants have blown up dozens of schools and have sought to discourage girls from going to school by snatching pens from their hands. Students, she said, reacted by hiding their books under their shawls.

“The so-called Taliban were afraid of women’s power and were afraid of the power of education,” she told hundreds of students, faculty members and well-wishers who packed Harvard’s ornate Sanders Theater for the award ceremony.

Malala highlighted the fact that very few people have spoken out against what is happening in her home region.

“Although few people spoke, the voice for peace and education was powerful,” she said.

The chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize Committee, Thorbjorn Jagland, paid a special tribute to Malala in a message read publicly during her award ceremony.

“Your courage,” Jagland said in the tribute, “is sending a strong message to women to stand up for their rights, which constitutes a precondition for peace.”